It was a week of recriminations as lawmakers, civil society organizations and the public slammed the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” criminal prosecution policy that split families apart at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The outcry caught the administration flat-footed, leading to a new executive order that supposedly keeps children with their parents. But the fix still requires families to be detained (possibly in violation of an existing court order), and it doesn’t address the key issue that is prompting these hard choices in the first place — the untenable backlog in our immigration court system.

Graduation season is wrapping up and summer vacation season is just beginning, rites of passage enjoyed by Americans and visitors alike. Foreign tourists flock to America’s beaches, parks and cities, and students travel from all over the world to study in our world-class universities. But data suggests this summer may bring fewer of both.

Tourists and students account for roughly 80 percent of total non-immigrant visas issued by the U.S. each year. They spur demand for goods and services, which pads economic growth and helps to power the tourism industry and higher education system.

When President Donald Trump travels to California later this month to view the prototype designs for a new border wall, perhaps he will take a moment to think about what could have been. Because as things stand, those eight 30-foot-long samples are the only walls likely to be built.

Trump could have had his wall. He had numerous opportunities to get it, dating all the way back to the “Chuck and Nancy” deal last fall. All he had to do was agree to something he says he wants — a permanent replacement for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program he canceled in September.

After months of talks, Congress is still stuck in the throes of an immigration debate it didn’t want but now needs to settle. And after months of signaling — and then retracting — support for various proposals, President Donald Trump finally laid out a clear, one-page summary of a deal he would accept on permanent protections for DACA recipients and “Dreamers.”

Both Republicans and Democrats had hoped the plan would help move things forward. Instead, it managed to anger both sides quickly and equally. That reaction is often the sign of a viable compromise, but this plan instead joined nearly every other immigration proposal — from hard-right enforcement-heavy bills, to progressive attempts at a clean DREAM Act, to the bipartisan Gang of Six proposal — as a nonstarter.

As Congress speeds toward its year-end pileup of “must pass” legislation, a legislative fix for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, remains in the balance. President Donald Trump insists it should not be tied to the annual appropriations scramble. But many Democrats — and a few Republicans — are calling for the issue to be addressed this year, with some threatening to withhold their votes to fund the government if legislation for so-called Dreamers is not attached.

Beyond the political posturing and jockeying for leverage, there is a pragmatic reason why any fix, if that is what both parties really want, should happen this year: it takes months for the government to ramp up a new program.